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The US government has concluded that the Iranian government is behind the hack and leak operation targeting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and also attempted to target the Biden-Harris campaign, the FBI and other US intelligence agencies said Monday.
The FBI briefed the former president on its preliminary findings in recent days after news organizations reported receiving documents believed to have come from an account belonging to a senior Trump campaign official. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said the hackers were unsuccessful in their attempts against the Biden-Harris campaign.
U.S. officials believe the investigation marks the clearest sign yet of efforts by Iran and other countries to try to influence the 2024 election.
“The IC is confident that the Iranians, through social engineering and other efforts, sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties. Such activities, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. electoral process,” the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement on Monday.
“It is important to note that this approach is not new. Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and previous federal election cycles, but also in other countries around the world,” the statement added.
The UN mission in Iran on Monday rejected what it called “baseless” allegations that its government was behind the hacking and leaking operation.
“Such accusations are baseless and baseless,” Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said in a statement to CNN. “The Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere in the US presidential election. If the US government truly believes in the validity of its accusations, it must provide us with relevant evidence (if any) to which we will respond accordingly.”
Iran caught some U.S. officials by surprise with how aggressive it was in trying to interfere in the 2020 election, including threatening election officials. Four years later, the element of surprise may have worn off, but Iran appears no less willing to try to cause chaos during the election, according to current and former U.S. officials.
In the latest hacking operation, investigators believe suspected Iranian hackers breached the personal email account of longtime Trump ally and political operative Roger Stone in June, then used that email account to try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official as part of a persistent effort to access campaign networks, CNN previously reported. reported.
In addition to the hack, an AOL account using the pseudonym “Robert” leaked internal Trump campaign documents to media outlets, Politico first reported. One of those documents was an investigative dossier on Trump’s vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, Politico reported.
The FBI studied email records provided by Microsoft, Google and AOL and spoke with Trump campaign staff to determine who was responsible for the hack and who for the leak, the sources said.
The attribution of the attack was fairly straightforward: the hackers’ techniques matched those of a notorious group affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.y (CGRI).
Some U.S. officials were not sure whether the same IRGC-backed group that carried out the hack had leaked the documents, according to two sources familiar with the matter, because the group is not known for its leaks. However, investigators who studied the AOL account were able to link its digital infrastructure to the same Iranian hacking group, one of the sources said.
A person familiar with the email exchanges between “Robert” and the journalists said the person behind the account spoke broken English and pressured a journalist to release more documents.
Iranian hackers have also targeted the email accounts of current US officials and people associated with Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden. researchers on Google said last week.
The FBI informed Trump that all signs point to Iran being responsible for the hacking effort and that hackers were able to breach Stone’s email accounts, sources familiar with the matter said. Trump said publicly last week that the FBI was investigating the attack and that “it looks like Iran.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Artemis Moshtaghian contributed to this report.
